Recently, there has been a steady trickle of bad news about America universities.

Now we have learned of new research suggesting some students are learning next to nothing at college.

Jenna Johnson at the Washington Post tells us about a book released earlier this year, titled, “Academically Adrift: Limited learning on college campuses.”

As part of their research, co-authors Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia administered a standardized test to 2,300 college students at two dozen schools during their first semester, then again after their second year.

It turns out over 45% showed no improvement over that time.

Check out Ms Johnson’s blog post on the subject, worth a read. Unlike the students in the study mentioned above, you will likely learn something!

We all have foods that we love for memories. As a child, I remember my dad making me pasta. It was macaroni in a pink sauce.  I was only three or four years old yet his macaroni dish was vivid to me, though he only made it once. Since then, Macaroni became one of my favorite things to make. So guess what’s for dinner tonight?  I call this one “Macaroni in Red” which is basically Macaroni in Marinara sauce dressed in grated cheddar and sun dried tomatoes.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup of Macaroni Pasta
• 8 pieces of sun dried tomato
• 5 Tbs of Marinara Sauce (more if desired)
• 1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese (more if desired)
• chopped dried Parsley (or herbs of any kind) leaves (optional)

Directions

1. boil pasta in salt water
2. cut sun dried tomatoes to bits
3. mix sun dried tomatoes with Marinara sauce.
4. take out pasta and transfer into baking bowl
5. grate the Cheddar cheese (as much desired), you can have some freedom with this!
6. mix tomato sauce, grated cheese and macaroni in the bowl. Mix herbs also if desired. sprinkle some cheese on top.
7. set the baking bowl in the oven. 375° for 8 minutes, or until the cheese on top melts.

I guess you can see that this is a more “grown up” version of the simple macaroni and cheese. It’s quick and easy to make — perfect for a week night dinner or if you are having some friends over and are eager to show off some culinary skills (or just too embarrassed to whip out another good old can of Chef Boyardee).

Thank you Italians for introducing tomato to pasta…Buon appetito!

Isaiah 53 (New International Version)

1 Who has believed our message

and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

4 Surely he took up our pain

and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to our own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

Yet who of his generation protested?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

for the transgression of my people he was punished.

9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

and with the rich in his death,

though he had done no violence,

nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,

and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin,

he will see his offspring and prolong his days,

and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

11 After he has suffered,

he will see the light of life and be satisfied;

by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,

and he will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,

and he will divide the spoils with the strong,

because he poured out his life unto death,

and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many,

and made intercession for the transgressors.

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (New International Version)

26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Reflection:

Have you applied to something where all the other applicants seemed to be such a better fit for the task than you could ever be? It’s pretty daunting, right? But, fortunately for us, living for God isn’t like anything else we could try to do in life.

Christ did not have anything in his outward appearance to draw us to Him. Yet, it was not what He looked like that mattered, but who He was and what He did for us. In the same way, God does not love us or call us to live for Him because of these outside things or based on what position we hold in life. Therefore, even though we might be the worst possible candidates for the position, God can use even the most unlikely of people to do even the greatest of things for the Kingdom. We can be confident of this because we know that it is about His love and grace in our lives that matters, and it is that same love and grace that others will see and also want for themselves.

Response:

Let’s pray that we would not trust in our appearances, our talents, or our abilities to be able to minister to others, but that we would trust that it is God’s Spirit that will shine through our lives and in our hearts so that those around us may see and know Christ in a real and powerful way.

MS Thesis Defense

Context-Aware Middleware for Activity Recognition

Radhika Dharurkar

10:30am Thursday, 19 May 2011, ITE 325B

Smartphones and other mobile devices have a simple notion of context largely restricted to temporal and spatial coordinates. Service providers and enterprise administrators can deploy systems incorporating activity and relations context to enhance the user experience, but this raises considerable collaboration, trust and privacy issues between different service providers. Our work is an initial step toward enabling devices themselves to represent, acquire and use a richer notion of context that includes functional and social aspects such as co-located social organizations, nearby devices and people, typical and inferred activities, and the roles people fill in them.

We describe a system that learns to recognize richer contexts using sensor data from a person's Android phone along with annotations on her calendar and general background knowledge. Geo-social locations include the concepts of 'home' and 'school' and can be extended to others like 'work' or 'a restaurant'.

Our framework combines data from the phone's sensors (GPS, WI-FI, Bluetooth, acceleration, proximity, etc.) with data mined from applications (e.g., calendar) to produce features that can be used in a machine learning system. Training data from several university students and staff was collected using a system that periodically prompted the user for her true geo-social location and activity. The resulting classifier models were used to predict the individual user's context from new sensor data. The data from a set of users was combined to create a generic model.

We report on an evaluation of the individual and generic models in the university setting for predicting context. Finally, we discuss how our extended context notion can be applied to many interesting applications for smart phone users.

Committee:

• Dr. Tim Finin (chair)
• Dr. Anupam Joshi
• Dr. Yelena Yesha
• Dr. Laura Zavala

Design + Paper! Two things commonvision loves!

Viking is a paper brand sold through Office Depot. They just released this new logo design which pairs clunky text with cute doodles. I think the use of doodles is very well executed, especially on the packaging, and balances out the heavy text with a bit of whimsy.

More examples of how this design is being utilized:

Click to watch a video advertisement

I found this on one of my favorite sites: Brand New

Dr. Rick Forno will discuss UMBC’s Cybersecurity programs and give updated details about the upcoming Maryland Cyber Challenge at a UMBC Cybersecurity Webinar at 1:00pm on Thursday June 9.

The webinar will describe the UMBC Cybersecurity programs, covering:

• Master of Professional Studies and graduate certificate program details
• Innovative curriculum highlights
• Convenient and flexible class schedules
• Opportunities for career development and professional advancement

Dr. Forno will also discuss the Maryland Cyber Challenge and Conference:

• Participate in a competition to find Maryland’s best minds in Cybersecurity
• Details will be given about the October 2011 Baltimore Conference
• How to get involved as a sponsor or partner and promote cybersecurity in Maryland!

The webinar is free but requires registration.